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CWmike writes "Microsoft has pulled almost every version of Office from its own online store to comply with a court order requiring it to remove custom XML technology from its popular Word software that starts on Monday. As of mid-day, the only edition available from the Microsoft Store was Office Ultimate 2007, a $670 'full-version' suite. All other Windows editions, as well as Office 2008 for Mac, were accompanied by the message: 'This product is currently unavailable while we update versions on our site. We expect it to be available soon.' Microsoft confirmed that the disappearance of Office was related to the injunction that came out of a patent infringement case the company lost in 2009. 'We've taken steps to comply with the court's ruling and we're introducing the revised software into the US market," said Michael Croan, a senior marketing manager, in an e-mail. He also downplayed the move. 'This process will be imperceptible to the vast majority of customers, who will find both trial and purchase options readily available.'"

I'm always up for a good bashing, but eh what? It was already decided in court that MS was violating the patent (which imo is stupid, btw). They were required to stop selling Word, and now they comply. Whats the news here? That MS complied to laws and judge orders?

Also, how is that "downplaying the move"? They probably worked on non-infringing Word version for long time already and are replacing it soon. In fact;

Microsoft has posted updates for both Word 2003 and Word 2007 to its download site and told customers in accompanying support documents that those updates are mandatory "only if you have been instructed to do so in a separate communication from Microsoft." The company has also committed to revamping Word 2008 for Mac and Word 2004 for Mac, even though those versions were not named in the injunction.

In the meantime, Microsoft also told potential customers that they can download the free beta of Office 2010, the next-generation suite slated for a June release.

Not really. MSFT just picks and chooses when to do so. MSFT doesn't believe in rules restricting molopolistic business practices--it has been a belief deeply ingrained within their executive team, including Gates and Ballmer. That belief extends to their resistance to conform with the spirit, if not the letter, of rulings pertaining to those practices including its attempts at tight integration of application-level programming into its OS (Internet Explorer, Media Player), lack of interoperability/closed

MS complied with the EU ruling, and note... immediately took full vengeance on: the USERS. $670 for an Office Cocktail to burn down your desktop. Smallchange, maybe to those driving a Veyron. I think it is finally time for those users (and their bosses) to "move on" to Open Office, even on the MS platform, and ultimately migrate to Linux desktop.

Did you also think that food stores pay off the stealing users from their own pockets, and don't increase prices to get it back from users?

A food store, like any other store, sets the price of the food it sells to the point that brings it the most profit. Rising the price will decrease, not increase, profits. So yes, it pays for any stolen items out of its own pockets, since it has no other options.

I wish people stopped perpetuating the PR-invented myth that companies are somehow impervious to fines becaus

I disagree. The kind of people who would use the trial version are the kind that don't have 600 bucks for the full package and no corporate backing. Those people are used to digging for bargains, and free is a good price.

AbiWord on the other hand is pretty lame compared to OpenOffic or StarOffice. I look at it every three or four years to see if it has improved, and it is a perennial disappointment.

Do you work in an IT related field? Because I do not. And I do not know anybody (at work) that has even heard of openoffice. In fact, I do not think it would even occur to most of those people that there might even exist another "office" solution.

I know when I tell people that I don't use MS Office they are shock and almost immeditely assume that I must not view any documents at home.

"Do you work in an IT related field? Because I do not. And I do not know anybody (at work) that has even heard of openoffice."

""I know when I tell people that I don't use MS Office they are shock and almost immeditely assume that I must not view any documents at home.

Hey. Here is a radical idea. Maybe instead of telling people at work that you don't use MS Office, you should tell them about Open Office. Then you would know lots of people who have heard about Open Office!

Keep telling them otherwise. I know a dude who's loved him some Microsoft (as long as somebody would copy a disk for him) and has insulted my use of open source for the last decade. This month he loves OpenOffice.org and has been emailing me about how great it is like he's the one who discovered it. Looking into other open source programs and musing about whether Yellow Dog would revitalize his old Powerbook so I guess hell froze over. It can be amazing how slow people are to contemplate change b

Yep
Had the same here in Cardiff.
Guy thought Linux was strange and only used a snide copy of win2000.
When that died on him He asked me if I could get him a copy of Win2k to install.
I said no, I'll install Linux for his needs ( basically ebay!!) He's now stuck with a broken Win2k and no drivers for his old scanners.
He still complain a lot though!!!

Do you work in an IT related field? Because I do not. And I do not know anybody (at work) that has even heard of openoffice. In fact, I do not think it would even occur to most of those people that there might even exist another "office" solution.

I think it would probably depend more on what you actually use an office package for in your work.

I, along with my colleagues, have either a.doc,.xls or.ppt file open all day to work on. Most of us are self-employed as well - the PP got it right that many

So anyone that makes good points that are a bit more level headed than the usual hate based anti-Microsoft drivel is an apologist?

The problem with Slashdot (which really is a problem that stems from the FOSS community) is that it often has a zealotry to it that does it more harm than good in the eyes of anyone looking for objective comments. You read some of the anti-MS stuff here and if you were an outsider it'd give you the impression the site is full of nutjobs.

I agree with your point. I have serious reservations about Microsoft in terms of how they do business. I don't necessarily hate them, I just disagree with how they do business. And when I make comments about them, I try to frame it about something they do, not who they are. I try to keep it level and neutral and just state the facts.

My feelings are the same for Apple. I won't buy Apple or Microsoft products until they start to embrace and support free standards that can be used by anybody. That's re

I can understand where you're coming from, but I take things a bit more practically. We spent three years trying to make a Server 2003 network do what we need for it to do before going over to Apple. Now we're slowly making the transition. Just getting a Mac server made things work WAY more smoothly. Setting it up was a breeze, except for making the Windows machines play nice with it. Every person I've put on a Mac, I never hear from them unless they need a new user added or something of that nature.

So anyone that makes good points that are a bit more level headed than the usual hate based anti-Microsoft drivel is an apologist?

Recognizing that Microsoft is a bad corporate citizen is not "hate based anti-Microsoft drivel".

They have a long history of using other people's innovation without permission, and this case is no exception. I4i is no patent troll, they produced, sold and still sell an XML editing tool. They have a very specific patent, specific enough that other implementations (like ODF) don't infringe.

Sopssa is an apologist. He participated in the original discussion, and has to be aware that this patent suit is fair and valid, and yet is still dismissive of i4i's efforts. That isn't reasonable behavour, it's fanboism or worse.

They have a long history of using other people's innovation without permission, and this case is no exception.

Heh.. If you think inventing something trivial to do with XML tags is "innovation" you have a diminished capacity of thought or creativity.. or something.

They have a very specific patent, specific enough that other implementations (like ODF) don't infringe.

This makes no sense. Just because ODF doesn't infringe, doesn't make the patent valid or specific. Looks like you haven't even read the patent. The language is extremely general and broad. Or maybe you just agree with everything a judge says? Ofcource, that might make you a racist too;)

and has to be aware that this patent suit is fair and valid, and yet is still dismissive of i4i's efforts

What if he thinks it isn't fair and valid? Is he not allowed to have a

If the sun shone out of my arse like it does yours I would definitely log in and let the community know who I am so that I was not alone basking in the glory that is me. Then again if i was just some fuck-knuckle spouting crap about stuff I know nothing about I would probably remain as an AC too.

It's certainly not that simple. Whilst I agree that's true in the odd Apple article, there are plenty also where it's not the case and where Apple gets defended, sometimes even illogically so. For example, I've seen companies like Apple and Valve defended over DRM in the past, by the very same people who attack DRM when it comes from the likes of Sony.

Perhaps more interestingly though is that I recommend you look through a few Apple related articles here without filtering out any comments based on their sco

"Like breaking the law in pretty much all major localities around the planet."

You realise a lot of companies have too yes? Facebook has been guilty of breaking privacy laws across the world, Apple has been guilty of price fixing in the UK due to it's higher pricing of songs to the rest of the EU, Google has found itself guilty of breaching copyright across the world through it's books quest. But you single out only Microsoft's cases?

"If you hear a chorus of disapproval maybe, just maybe, there is a frigging reason of why people feel so aggravated."

This argument is stupid, by the same logic you could argue that Microsoft's dominance in many areas is because most people prefer them. The fact is, you can't infer anything about the validity of the problem from numbers when there's clearly other factors involved like bias in this case, or monopolistic practices in Microsoft's case.

"Google and Apple now have quite a dominance in the markets that will matter in the future and people are far more cool about them because they are not complete and utter unethical bastards."

Huh? Is this the same Apple that although improving, is still one of the worst offenders when it comes to pollution caused by manufacturing and disposal of it's products? The same Apple that uses child labour? The same Apple guilty of price fixing? The same Apple guilty of being one of the most prolific pushers of DRM over the last decade? The same Apple that simply blames the user when their iPhone explodes in their face? The same Apple that leverages a combination of iTunes, the iPhone and it's app store for anti-competitive practices?

What about Google? Is this the same Google that wants to farm all your data? The same Google whose CEO doesn't believe you need privacy unless you have something to hide? The same Google that would happily pander to Chinese censorship and so on?

Look, I'm a fan of some of Apple and Google's products as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend they don't do much wrong as well, clearly they can be quite evil themselves, arguably just as much so as Microsoft. In reality Microsoft seem no less evil than other major players like Facebook either. In the grand scheme of things Microsoft couldn't even come close to many manufacturing firms, many mining firms and so forth. Really in terms of being evil, Microsoft as a company, are pretty much par for the course. The difference is, they're the main opponent of the open source movement and as this is largely an open source supporting community then that is why you see such a focus on them here, not because there is some reality in them being evil enough to stand out from the rest of the world.

I feel like I have eaten from the tree of knowledge. My eyes are opened. Please mod parent up. I'm serious here. This isn't flamebait and I'm not trolling and I'm not trying to be funny here. But the above comment represents a very well-written argument and if I had some mod points he'd certainly get one.

Perfect opportunity for Open Office to gain some ground. You and I may not know the people, but there will be someone out there who needs to download Office during the week for an assignment or work task, and will be unable to buy their legitimate version online. So the person goes to google and types in "office suite" and what comes up first? OO.org

Yeah! Well, Applixware runs like crap on every single operating system it happens to be compatible with, particularly Solaris. And its interface looks like a very poorly designed MS Access front end:-) (I have no idea what my point is)

Funny I just went into OO.org and it has a button that says spell check. But it doesn't work. I just misspelled several words and it found no errors. Which is why I don't consider it to have a spell checker.

K you win I suck. I've never used OO more than a half a dozen times when I was to lazy to move my track ball 1/4 inch up to get to Abi word or whatever it is. [The origional thought behind my comment was to compare commercial app to commercial app...oo is oss therefore apples oranges kinda thing but whatever. I use a office program like twice a month. (It's not a part of my job...I draw pretty pictures and just fax them) Btw were did technology go wrong after the fax?

"You'd think that Microsoft could manage to remove the XML extensions that the judge didn't like by now. Perhaps the regression testing for Windows 98 on a 286 slowed them down?"

Yes. It slowed them down by exactly enough time to make sure they get press stating that the new version will be available for download in a few days. Funny how that just happened to work out that way for them, isn't it?

Aren't they supposed to use XML to be compliant and open? And what if they can say: 'Hey, we tried, but this one bad small company threatend de poor liddle MicroSoft with a patent lawsuit and now we have to take XML out, sooo sad!The truth is, MS wants it's formats to stay proprietary and I figure they'd welcome any reason that holds to keep it that way. I wouldn't be suprised if this XML-patent thing was staged.

They have to pay that little poor bad company 270 million in damages.... So no- I don't think this is an inside job. Would it not have been way cheaper to just push their own standard? As they did... with xml...?

It is most similar to the "spreadsheet as database table" patent in the sense that in both cases the patent covered something pretty obvious, about something which users were starting to need, something that was hanging in the air so to speak. In both cases the patent covered *any* thinkable solution to something users might want, that was easily implementable by any competent programmer, which is probably why Microsoft said bugger off in the first place. (The spreadsheet patent was also reality-denying by

i4i have stated that OO.org does not implement the functionality covered in the patent, so OO.org (and thus Star Office, and by impliccation ODF) is fine. The same will go for other ODF-based office suites like KOffice.

XML doesn't magically make something compliant and open. Mostly it just makes it bloated. Well-documented formats unencumbered by patents are what makes something open, and that doesn't depend on the latest flavour-of-the-month serialization format.

I am getting so sick of these companies misusing the hard work of others. Microsoft Office has been free for home-users since version 1, same goes for their OS, windows 1 to 7. All free to the average home user and then some business that never created a damn thing comes in, demands more cash than 99.9% of startups would make in total in 200 years (look it up... it's true:D ) and kills a great product while doing so. This is why open source and free software just doesn't work. The patentbitches wait silent

Ultimately the tricky problem is who do you actually sue with open source. Technically every person on the planet owns the code and is free to use the application that the code creates. So sue the planet, you can't really sue companies providing service and support, nor companies providing manuals, not even companies that supply you with a copy of the completed application that you technically already owned before you even approached the company.

The infringing source is of course a composite, with thousands of contributors, rather than one. The underlying reality of that, is that it is a composite of code modules that creates the perceived infringement (only in countries with software patents) not any of the individual modules, as each module has a specific range of non infringing functions and it is only when combined, in effect compiled and the application assembled, that infringement occurs. Whilst I made not have contributed any code, does tha

You can sue anyone who uses the patented technology. So you can sue all major users for royalties for each infringement(use) of the patent. The author and distributors would be most endangered by having users of the software legally assault him for a plethora of liabilities related to their being sued, but can also be sued for IP infringement himself. Unless you are someone like Microsoft with well known deep pockets, you would most likely be forced to settle the suit as you'd have no way to handle the lega

... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild. After all, the software industry has been telling us for years that we don't really get to buy software, just rent it. So surely it can't be legal for Microsoft to continue to rent out software that violates someone else's patent!

... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild.

A large part of the damage award is to cover those copies. That's why they don't have to be disabled. They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.

They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.

It's still weird, though.

There is a period until the infringement can be fixed. These infringing new copies could be included in the settlement, which is only a temporary situation. Instead they actually pull Office from their online store, which I think is strange. There is more going on.

All big corps seem to be doing that all the time, no? MS, Apple, IBM, Sun - if you dig around, you'll probably find all possible combos of X suing Y taken from the list above, yet not only they do business with each other, they have various partnership deals and such (which were often in place while the lawsuits went on!).

... they should also have to deactivate every (legal) copy that's currently out in the wild.

A large part of the damage award is to cover those copies. That's why they don't have to be disabled. They pay damages to cover the copies already out there, and have to stop selling new copies that infringe.

What's funny is that most of the users of those 'infringing copies' probably don't even know about or use the infringing functionality.

Well maybe they have to do that but what would that do to business? Practically every business in the western world would grind to a halt if suddenly denied Microsoft Office, even the business of managing patents.

How convenient that the $670 edition should be the one that remains available.

I can only think of three explanations for this:

1. MS are quite happy to put some of the revenue from Office to paying damages, provided the revenue is from the most expensive version.2. They're holding back on making the cheaper versions compliant intentionally to see if only having the expensive version available dramatically affects sales.3. They're not as well organised as I'd like to believe - packaging every different edition of Office is a major undertaking which requires a lot of work.

How convenient that the $670 edition should be the one that remains available.

I can only think of three explanations for this:

1. MS are quite happy to put some of the revenue from Office to paying damages, provided the revenue is from the most expensive version.2. They're holding back on making the cheaper versions compliant intentionally to see if only having the expensive version available dramatically affects sales.3. They're not as well organised as I'd like to believe - packaging every different edition of Office is a major undertaking which requires a lot of work.

How about:4. Each SKU has to be built and tested by the same group, and each SKU takes a certain amount of time. MS decided to concentrate on some combination of the biggest volume/biggest revenue SKUs and leave the lesser used ones to the end.

How about:4. Each SKU has to be built and tested by the same group, and each SKU takes a certain amount of time. MS decided to concentrate on some combination of the biggest volume/biggest revenue SKUs and leave the lesser used ones to the end.

I thought that, but seeing as each SKU is a superset of the one beneath it it seems odd that the packaging and testing isn't to a greater or lesser extent automated. It's not like Microsoft couldn't manage the resources to do that.

Having said that, seeing how anti-automation everything Microsoft has historically churned out is (powershell notwithstanding), perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised.

I am no MS fan boy but I think that this action by the patent parasites i4i is completely wrong. We all know that the US patent system needs to be reformed, especially in the area of software patents -- this is just another example of how it is broken.

It appears there's a very twisted opportunity here: patent as many evil ideas as you can then wait for companies to pursue those strategies by patent trolling them. How about starting by patenting violations of net neutrality like "a system and method for filtering internet content to prevent civil unrest." Or protecting an emerging tech like SVG: "System and method to extend svg-format files with any non-svg content."

To me, the most critical thing in the hobby market right now is the lack of good software courses, books and software itself. Without good software and an owner who understands programming, a hobby computer is wasted. Will quality software be written for the hobby market?

Almost a year ago, Paul Allen and myself, expecting the hobby market to expand, hired Monte Davidoff and developed Altair BASIC. Though the init

Just because it hits Microsoft, I am not going to overboard and root for that gold digger who claims to have patented some XML tags or whatever. XML is by definition extensible. How can anyone patent a tag?

Let us say this patent claim can potentially hurt all ODF vendors, but right now the patent troll is going after Microsoft. Can Microsoft pay some huge award and thus validate the patent claim and use it as a weapon against other competitors. Remember how the Automobile Manufacturers' Association in 189

In the mean time, we would rather you pop on over to your favorite torrent site and get a virus infested pirated copy of our lovely office suite rather than trudging over to the damned dingy open office site and use that... thanks, Steve

It did not need to be restated. If you wanted to simply voice your support to his thread, then you should have replied to his thread rather than starting a thread whose sole purpose was to agree with the previous thread.